New HS Multi-Sport Festival

[Marlow]

I'm sure this will interest exactly two other people here, but perhaps I can entice guru and others to bring down squads to bask in the Florida sun next summer. In a home-page-linked announcement, Disney World (Orlando) has sold a portion of itself off to the devil, aka ESPN (I kid), renaming their big sports facility the ESPN Wide World of Sports.

There will be a weeklong, multi-sport event planned for July 2009 by Disney and ESPN spotlighting some of the top high school athletes in the nation.

The event, called ESPN RISE Sports Festival, will run from July 18 - 25 and will have more than 2,000 athletes competing in softball, baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse and track and field events. The event is set to be televised on ESPNU and on ESPN online sites.

C'mon down, the water's fine!

[tandfman]

Re: New HS Multi-Sport Festival

Disney World (Orlando) has sold a portion of itself off to the devil, aka ESPN (I kid)

Sorry, Marlow. No sale. Disney has owned ESPN for more than 10 years. This is just some co-branding.

[gh]

Wonder how happy USATF will be with this puppy: based on this year's dating, would go head-to-head with the Junior Olympics.

[guru]

Wonder how happy USATF will be with this puppy: based on this year's dating, would go head-to-head with the Junior Olympics.

What does USATF care? They sent the Juniors up against NON this past year.

[gh]

I realize that NON is the be-all, end-all for your team, but that's a private operation that chooses nothing and USATF is charged with choosing the team for the World Juniors. I'd say the latter gets the whip hand in that case.

[guru]

I realize that NON is the be-all, end-all for your team, but that's a private operation that chooses nothing and USATF is charged with choosing the team for the World Juniors. I'd say the latter gets the whip hand in that case.

Apparently German Fernandez, Robert Finnerty, Nadonnia Rodriques, Chalonda Goodman, Jasmine Stowers, et al. didn't get the memo.

[gh]

What's that got to do with the price of potatoes in Hungary?

You intimated that USATF had somehow done something evil by going up against NON. I'm simply stating that they pretty much have the right to go where they want. The NSSF guys were classy enough to recognize this and said so.

The fact that some stars chose to go to NON instead is irrelevant. I'm glad both meets got some headliners.

[guru]

You intimated that USATF had somehow done something evil by going up against NON.

I implied nothing of the sort. I simply say if USATF had no problems crowding NON weekend, they shouldn't sweat someone sharing their JO time.

[gh]

Au contraire! They're the national governing body (for better or worse) and supposed to be in control of their own destiny. To have their product diluted by the commercial pirates at Disney is criminal.

[tandfman]

Wonder how happy USATF will be with this puppy: based on this year's dating, would go head-to-head with the Junior Olympics.

Based on next year's dating, however, there's no conflict. The USATF JO meet after the Disney thing.

http://www.usatf.org/events/2009/USATFJ ... pionships/

[gh]

So that means a 2-day overlap between USATF JOs and AAU. Not that many ever do both anyway.

[Bruce Kritzler]

Did Disney get lights for the track?

[George P.]

Sounds like it will turn into fodder for a "reality TV" series featuring athletic (?) youngsters. Don't see any reason to believe ESPN/Disney is doing it for the love of sports. Doesn't sound promising to me.

[guru]

People can bash ESPN/Disney all they want, but they're doing a helluva lot more to increase visibilty of the HS end of the sport(in conjunction with Dyestat) than ANYONE.

Today, for instance, they will be webcasting the Div.-1, Div.-2, and seeded races from the Stanford Invitational on ESPN360.

[gh]

I've never thought of "visibility" as even being on the radar on the list of any problems high school track has.